As to the grade of individual pitches, I'll have to concur with Dave. We didn't have a pen and paper at the time and had to do a route description later. What we come up with may be sketchy.

The first pitch may be more appealing with one or two bolts as it's a 40m run out off the deck. Maybe a couple up higher too.

I'll work on a topo. If someone has a photo of that section of cliff we can easily mark in a topo. We didn't have a camera but the next day where able to suss out the whole route from the road below.

The climb had a distinct alpine flavour for us as we had initially intended to climb Noblesse but got a little off track on the approach. We had the shits with scrub bashing and decided to just start going up. We had a light rack and didn't start climbing until 2.30pm. We finished at 7.30. We were alternating leads with virtually no down time at all. The second would arrive at the belay with the pack (with jumpers, shoes, head torches and water), ditch it and grab the rack and take off. The only rest time was while belaying.

We thought it was an excellent route with long clean pitches of good easy granite slabbing. With some big run outs.

Sounds great! given my experience with about 3 repeats in 32 years on Noblesse Oblige, I'd suggest adding a small number of bolts to it.
Why the epic walking in, did you go up the gully itself rather than the ridge on the right?

On 25/03/2008 mikl law wrote:>Why the epic walking in, did you go up the gully itself rather than the>ridge on the right?

You picked it like a snotty!

I wanted to stick to the ridge on the right but Dave was ahead and kind of slid down into the gully. Casting better judgment aside, I blindly followed. Once on our route we could clearly see where we had gone wrong. I must admit, however, I'm extremely glad we stuffed up the walk in and ended up doing the new route. We both had a great time on it.

We discussed it afterwards and decided we probably will add some bolts to it, next trip down. It was such a good route that it would be a shame for it to never get repeated.

Well done AH & DF.
Your timing is good as I know of others who have/had designs on possibilities in that area!
To avoid controversy I suggest you record its location accurately or you could find it made more safe than you would like at a later date in the name of another new route!

On 26/03/2008 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:>Well done AH & DF.>Your timing is good as I know of others who have/had designs on possibilities>in that area!>To avoid controversy I suggest you record its location accurately or you>could find it made more safe than you would like at a later date in the>name of another new route!>

Thanks Rod.

Between what you have said and what Mikl has said, it sounds like The Bleeding Nun's days may be soon over. It will be a shame if it got retrobolted and renamed. I edited the route description to try to make it more detailed. There's not much else I can do.

It's kind of ironic that the only real way we can protect our new onsight trad route from being bolted and renamed is by going back and bolting it ourselves.

On 26/03/2008 wallwombat wrote:>It's kind of ironic that the only real way we can protect our new onsight trad route from being bolted and renamed is by going back and bolting it ourselves.

Well it is probably safe for a little while. If it doesn't see a repeat for years (given it is only grade 14) then people might feel retro-bolting is justified.

And what is the problem with trying to put grades on a few pitches in your route description?

Also, there is nothing that you have written in the actual description that makes me want to repeat this route. It simply mentions that it is run-out. You should include some of the route's character mentioned in your later post.

The problem with trying to put grades on individual pitches was simple; poor memory.

By the top we had a hard time remembering details of some of the earlier pitches. We were moving quickly as to not get benighted. There was not a lot of discussion happening. There was no '' Shit! How slick was that slab..blah..blah..blah..". We only stopped to get the drink bottle out once in the entire 4.5 hours.We didn't really talk until reaching the top and then we still had to get the 7 kms back down to the van at the start, so words weren't a priority.

I've put individual grades on the pitches but I doubt they are accurate. Dave might grade them totally differently. Both of us agreed that when it comes down to grading easy granite slabs, neither of us are experts. 14 was simply the number we came up with as an overall grade for the climb. It might be 12 or it might be 15. For instance, the climbing at the top of the first pitch seemed harder for me, with a 40m runout below me than it did for Dave with a rope above him. It was vice versa on the second pitch. Overall, after the first 2 pitches it's reasonably well protected, with runouts of only about 10m max. We soloed the waterfall pitches, which in retrospect was dangerous. It was a trade off - move quickly or possibly get benighted. The moves at the top were some of the hardest on the route, which is why we did eventually bust the rope out.

I'm not sure what you want me to say in the description to make you want to climb it. There's a big-boobed pole dancer at the 4th belay? There's a genie in a lamp at the 6th belay who will make sure the Rams win a flag? In fact, if you are in that neck of the woods I'd recommend you climbed Noblesse Oblige instead. It's a cleaner line and it has bolts. That was our original plan.

On 26/03/2008 wallwombat wrote:>I'm not sure what you want me to say in the description to make you want to climb it. There's a big-boobed pole dancer at the 4th belay? There's a genie in a lamp at the 6th belay who will make sure the Rams win a flag? In fact, if you are in that neck of the woods I'd recommend you climbed Noblesse Oblige instead. It's a cleaner line and it has bolts. That was our original plan.

Gee, if there is a big boobed pole dancer as well as a genie to guarantee us a premiership, I might be able to get the whole Natimuk footy club to take up climbing and repeat your route.